"No technician should leave home without it. My lead technician
read it once and immediately began to understand what it was
that he was doing in the field of controls. It's a great confidence
builder. It can open the eyes of some of the most experienced
technicians, too."

--Mark Eatherton, Contractor and Industry Educator

Library of Articles & Useful Links

Here you will find a wealth
of information on a wide variety of subjects.
These articles originally appeared in Plumbing
& Mechanical Magazine from January,
2003 through 2007.
Please feel free to contact Carol if you have any questions
or comments on any of the articles, or if you have a suggestion
on a topic you want to know more about.

How can a simple thing be complicated?
Easy. So far in this column you've read that you -- not an electrician
-- should be doing your controls wiring. I have written about
the fact that a control circuit is a simple thing. It is a "circle"
of at least one of each of these three things: power supply,
switch and load.

A quick definition of aquastats and their
specifications.It's no mystery that an aquastat is a control
that goes with a boiler. If you don't know much more about it
than that, though, you have a lot of company. There seems to
be confusion about exactly what an aquastat does, and especially
about finding a replacement when one fails.

Whether for safety or operation, knowing
when to ground is essential. Wha'd ya mean?" says Bubba
the plumber-recently-turned-heating-tech. "How come you're
tellin' me I gotta ground that boiler ignition? I know better
- my power saw works just fine without a ground, and it's bigger!"

Rule of thumb: If you can’t find it in
15 minutes, it’s junk. I was traveling with Steve, a plumbing
distributor rep. As we pulled into the yard of Aesop’s Plumbing
and Heating, there was an all-too-common view — junk everywhere.

It’s always great when there are more pictures
than words, right? Except when those pictures are wiring diagrams.
Do you know how to read a wiring diagram? If you don’t, you
have a lot of company. Most people don’t — even people in the
heating business.

Don’t fear the meter — it’s an essential
tool. A multimeter is an essential tool for working with controls.
It’s as expected for a professional heating guy to have a meter
as it is for a doctor to have a stethoscope. Digital electronic
meters are very different from the old-fashioned analog items
that were expensive, fragile and hard to read.

Comfort, not survival of the human race,
is the purpose of a heating system.Is an electronic thermostat
appropriate for hydronic heating? How about for in-floor heating?
Can you use a setback thermostat for hydronic or in-floor heating?

You could replace a thermostat with a light
switch, and the heating equipment would never know the difference.
One day long ago, when I was newer in this industry than I am
now, I was sitting in the well-appointed office of a large homebuilder.
I was there because the heating contractor had told me that
the reason he was putting in the cheapest (in both meanings
of the word) thermostat was because the builder told him to.

How can a simple thing be complicated?
Easy.So far in this column you've read that you -- not an electrician
-- should be doing your controls wiring. I have written about
the fact that a control circuit is a simple thing. It is a "circle"
of at least one of each of these three things: power supply,
switch and load.
With a control circuit we're trying to make things go on and
off at the right times. That's done with switches.

When your customers shop retail, think
of it as a lead to long-term service. The subject at the distributor
counter today is “contractor stuff” being sold at retail home
handyman stores. Once again, perhaps as always, passions are
hot. Water heaters and thermostats have been there for a many
years, but each person makes his own discovery in his own time.

Solar heating is more similar than different
from what we already do with hydronics.Solar. Solar heating.
For some folks those are political fightin’ words. For others
it’s hope for the future. Those of us who were around in the
late-1970s and into the 1980s can remember solar as an energy
laughingstock. Now it’s once again becoming an exciting idea.

When things fit together, why do they sometimes
leak? How much have you thought about the threads on the controls
you work with? I was in a test lab recently, and the engineer,
Joe Beagen, was pointing out that there are NPT threads on an
air eliminator.
“Wait a minute,” I said to Joe. “Say that again.”

Adults learn differently. Adjust your training
accordingly. We're all teachers at one time or another, whether
we get in front of a class or not. Every owner, service manager
and senior technician has to be a trainer. And, oh boy, it's
not an easy job!

Learning the basics of electricity through
everyday items.A couple times in the last year, a neighborhood
kid has come to my door looking for work.
“Er, uh, hi. My name’s Sam,” he said, looking at his over-sized
shoes. “If you need someone to, er, do your yard work, I can
do it.”

Mercury bulb thermostats have been ‘mandatory
equipment’ for decades. Chances are, however, you’ll never miss
them now. There’s lots of lamenting that the age of mercury
thermostats is coming to an end. But I think it’s a positive
step forward with not much lost at all. Mercury-free models
look the same on the outside so you won’t get customer complaints.

Continued education is the key to staying
in the industry.There’s no debate about it — there is a shortage
of new guys in our industry. We like to grumble and blame it
on the new generation: “Those kids just don’t like to work.
They just don’t have the skills.”